


Twinings

by LucyRasmussen



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28360743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyRasmussen/pseuds/LucyRasmussen
Summary: Introspectives on relationships. Just because.
Relationships: Aelswith (The Last Kingdom)/Alfred the Great, Aethelflaed Lady of Mercia/Aldhelm (The Last Kingdom), Eadith & Finan (The Last Kingdom)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. The Witching Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eadith and Finan and the hours past midnight.

_Her nurse would always warn her of the witching hour._

_That in the quiet after midnight, witches and dragons roamed and no man was allowed to venture outside at that time._

_No man, but especially not small children._

_After she'd left the room, Eadith would always lay awake listening for those sounds until she was certain the witching ho_ _ur had gone._

_Similarly, in a land across the water, a little boy was told the same story and it kept him equally awake._

Eadith has seen many witching hours since.

Hours when she was wide awake and still no witches came. The monsters did though.

The first few weeks after her fathers disgrace, she would listen to the shouting in the courtyard of sentries not having been paid in weeks.

The threat of taking her as payment instead.

In the end, they'd gotten so bad that her home was no longer a safe place.

She'd looked back at her ancestral home and the tears froze on her cheeks.

Her brother assures her that she's safe here.

With him being gone and a lord whose eyes keep wandering places she feels they shouldn't.

His hatred takes on poisonous form as the night goes on.

She has not met Aethelflaed, but her name is known far and wide.

The dead king's daughter who is his match in intelligence and bravery. So not like her coward brother who sits on the throne.

Aethelred leers at her and buys her improper dresses and still she resists.

The notion that she is still a lady and not another puppet for him to use and abuse keeps her going.

For she is just as brave as any king's daughter.

And she is not afraid of what roams in the witching hours.

* * *

Finan often remembers those witching hours back in Ireland.

He would listen for the sound of banshees and witches and monsters and nothing ever came.

Just the waves breaking on the rocks outside the castle and his sister Grainne softly breathing next to him.

Sometimes she'd wake and listen along with him.

Sometimes she would hit him and call him bad names and tell him to go back to sleep.

"I pity any woman you will one day marry, brother."

He can still hear her voice saying that every time he makes eyes at a pretty peasant girl, or when he does something stupid to himself.

It's all he has left of her.

War ravaged his ancestral seat, and brought hunger and anger and sickness.

The sickness took Grainne during the witching hour.

He'd listen to her cough and cough and it bore right into his soul.

Until one snowy morning he woke up and the room was quiet.

She lay so very still, her dark hair fanned out over the pillow and her face peaceful.

He'd held on to her until worried servants came to look and found him clutching to her.

It took three of them to disentangle him and take him out of the room.

He still can bear the sound of incessant coughing to this day.

* * *

Uthred, for all his shadow walking is not a quiet man when sneaking around indoors.

Standing beside his pallet ordering him on his feet.

Ignoring the pleas to send Osferth or another random person to do what needs to be done.

Extracting Eadith.

He's not sure he heard right, but he has understood her name and that sets off every part of him.

Uthred wishes to discuss certain matters with Aethelflaed, only problem being that she does not sleep alone.

So Eadith must be removed and placed somewhere else for the night.

Uthred will not hear of Aethelflaed just using one of the other many bedrooms in her palace so he gets up and trods after him into the night.

The bedroom is warm and candle lit and he lifts Eadith up like she weighs nothing.

Her body is warm from sleep and she does not wake at this sudden intrusion.

He carries her through the hall and into a random room at the end of it.

It is already far after midnight and he stands in the doorway listening for the banshees but hears only owls hooting somewhere outside.

"No witches at this hour"

"No, lady, none at all."

* * *

She wanders around the encampment, sleep not willing to come.

They have come to South Seaxa to rid it of what the local thegns refer to as feral Danes.

And feral they are.

Thus far the feral Danes have stayed on the other side of the woods, and they have stayed on theirs.

They have set up camp with Aethelflaeds hall at the center, a precious tafl piece to be guarded at all times.

She's been enjoying this stint as lady in waiting, it's as close she'll come to her previous status.

Aethelflaed is a good lady who treats her with kindness she is not deserving of.

They have a quiet understanding, mostly bound by their love of the children and Uthreds orders.

She looks up at the night sky, brimming with stars.

"You should not be out at the witching hour, Lady."

He is leaning against a large yew tree, scraping his knife.

"I fear no witches or monsters."

He laughs and she sits down next to him.

They sit in the quiet and she leans her head against his shoulders.

Even when they don't speak, they say everything.

* * *

The battle with the feral Danes is short but fierce.

It begins at daybreak and ends at sundown.

They get away with little casualties and mostly bruised skin and sword wounds which is at good as a shield wall gets.

He finds Eadith after the battle, bruised and cut but none worse for wear.

She sits in front of him as they ride back to Mercia, the long bumpy road not kind on their wounded bodies.

Aethelflaed orders baths and food and bed and everything happens in a swirl around them.

He doesn't usually takes baths, but he could get used to this.

The steam rises steadily engulfing the room and soothing his restless mind.

He hears the door creaking and instinctively reaches for his weapon which isn't there.

A figure approaches and he feels something like fear clenching in his throat.

"Do you wish for company in this witching hour?"

She stands in front of him in nothing but her shift, and it clings to her body in all the right places.

Without waiting for an answer, she steps into the bath and places herself in this arms.

The shift is quickly discarded into a dark corner as they relish the warmth.

The servant walking in doesn't even flinch when he sees her.

After a few moments another servant brings in a clean shift and a dress and quickly departs before her soul is sullied.

Eadith laughs and he presses a kiss in her hair.

* * *

Their daughter is born in a witching hour.

Eadith has been labouring for hours with little progress and the ghost of death in childbirth lingers in her mind.

Hild assures her that she is doing fine but that the child is just being stubborn.

From one moment to the next, she feels something loosening inside her and within minutes a small babe slithers out.

She is beautiful, with dark eyes and dark hair.

They name her Grainne and for as long as they will know her, she will wake in the midnight hour listening for witches and monsters.

As all good children should.


	1. Mourning Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Aelswith introspective.

It takes her five weeks to summon the courage to visit his grave.

The thought of him trapped under a stone slab, not being heard when calling for help is too much to bear. She is a devout woman, raised from an early age to only believe in God and not wild tales. It is wicked to believe the dead are anything but at peace.

But in those first weeks, she thinks she hears him calling. Or hears him shuffling around outside the door. Perhaps she has spent more then half her life answering that voice and it is a difficult habit to break.

_She came here as a mere girl, barely out of the nursery._

_Barely anything at all._

_She found him handsome enough, but he refused to meet with her for several weeks citing matters of state. If one considers brothels as such_.

_It took several interferences by the Old King and her former brother in law to at last drag him into the hall and face his future bride._

_He’d stood in front of her, sizing her up with those inquiring eyes._

_She’d found him gawky and odd and the ordeal seemed to take half the night._

_“She will do.”_

She can still hear the jeers echoing if she tries hard enough.

The palace is quiet and the full moon hangs high in the night sky.

Somewhere in the distance, she thinks she hears a child cry.

_She’d wept when her maids dressed her for her wedding._

_They pinned a crown in her hair and told her what a lucky bride she was._

_She imagined lucky brides had at least seen their future spouse more then two times._

_But she is now fourteen, and she has God on her side.  
  
_

_And why would God wish for her to be unhappy at a time like this?  
  
_

She walks the halls, and sits in the gallery overlooking the courtyard.   
  


” _Let us walk.”_

_It’s not so much a question as a command and she is happy to finally leave the wedding bed._

_He holds her arm and he looks as though he is in pain._

_He grunts as they sit down on the stone bench and clenches his stomach._

_His forehead is glistening and she is lost for what to do_.

  
Sometimes she thinks she can smell him.

This combination of sweat and bile and something else which has no name but only she knows about.

_He suffers frequent bouts of illness the summer before their daughter is born._

_The child kicks and moves and she thinks they make some pairing._

_Him, incapacitated in his rooms not aware of the world and her, locked in her confinement similarly unaware of what is about to happen._

_The Old King despairs and one night she overhears him outside her door._

_”A pair of goats would be better suited for the throne, let us be thankful I still have an older son to reign Wessex should the occasion arise.”_

_The words etch themselves into her soul._

_And she prays they don’t etch on her unborn child._

The chapel is quiet and she listens for his voice.

Nothing comes so she ventures further inside.

In a corner, a baptism jar glistens.

_He is not present, in mind or spirit for Aethelflaed’s birth._

_Nor for her baptism._

_She doesn’t flinch when immersed in the water, this brave little soul she and Alfred brought into the world. She has his eyes and nose.  
  
_

_In her sinful thoughts, she hopes she has not inherited his frail health._

The effigy is not yet finished, but she can already make out the shape of that exact nose.

She lays her hands over the stone rise where his fingers will be carved.

Long, lean fingers. Laced with hers, Sprawled across her skin. Cupping a child’s head.

They’d gone cold by the end of his life.

_He doesn’t meet his daughter until Michaelmas of that year but he instantly takes to her._

_‘Holds her when she fusses and orders toys to be made for her._

_Somehow, he is not pained when he is around her._

_The physicians use the word miracle to describe it._

She tells him of their daughter, bravely defending Mercia while her fool of a husband bandies with whores and traitors. Of Edward and his bride and the child to be born next spring.   
  


Of Uthred, the scab on her marriage who refused to go away. Who still won’t go away.

Of his unwithering bravery and his love for their daughter.

Tells him everything until her voice refuses to go further.

When she finishes she listens to her own breathing in the quiet.

Again she thinks she hears him shuffling behind the pew, watching her.

For once, she believes in wild tales and catches him in the corner of her eye.

Just a moment before it goes.

  
“Goodbye my love.”

She will not return to this place soon, she knows.

For she is no longer a Lady to a ruling king and her place here is precarious.

So she leaves him to rest under his slab and unfinished effigy and hopes time will be kind to his legacy’

**Author's Note:**

> I am new to writing for TLK, and I’m sure there it’s not the most stellar story. But I hope it’s a good effort at least.


End file.
